{"id":285508,"date":"2025-09-15T21:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T21:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/285508\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T21:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T21:42:10","slug":"nba-writer-bill-simmons-has-high-praise-for-kon-knueppel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/285508\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA writer Bill Simmons has high praise for Kon Knueppel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While all the hype surrounding the beginning of the 2025 NBA season in October centers on former <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/ncaab\/teams\/duke-blue-devils\/1388\/\" data-autotag=\"d9e0b712-2f57-4d7c-998e-25a7ac4fbc0d\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Duke<\/a> star and current Dallas Maverick Cooper Flagg, there is another former Blue Devil who should have his team&#8217;s fan base excited for the future.<\/p>\n<p>Kon Knueppel, who was teammates with Flagg in their one season at Duke, was drafted by the Charlotte Hornets with the fourth overall pick in June&#8217;s draft, just three picks after Flagg. And while Knueppel didn&#8217;t get the headlines that the No. 1 overall pick received during his time in Durham or leading up to the season, one NBA pundit thinks Knueppel is going to be a star in the league.<\/p>\n<p>The Ringer&#8217;s Bill Simmons, a well-known NBA fan and writer, made a recent comment on a podcast about Knueppel.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I rarely do this,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/HornetsReddit\/status\/1966239620229902687?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1966239620229902687%7Ctwgr%5E2c57ef1e4f8cd370929ed91217d1e520e67bbb27%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.si.com%2Fnba%2Fdraft%2Fnba-rookies%2Fcan-charlotte-hornets-rookie-kon-knueppel-achieve-stardom\" rel=\"nofollow\">Simmons said<\/a>. &#8220;I guarantee this guy is gonna actually be on the team in 2028 (Olympics). That&#8217;s how strongly I feel about this person\u2026 Kon Knueppel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Knueppel starts his NBA career with a matchup against the Brooklyn Nets on Oct. 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While all the hype surrounding the beginning of the 2025 NBA season in October centers on former Duke&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3777],"tags":[2126,7,243,684,473,3878,667,666,692,2127,2125,685,318,6,55,2128],"class_list":{"0":"post-285508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-charlotte-hornets","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-blue","11":"tag-charlotte","12":"tag-charlotte-hornets","13":"tag-charlottehornets","14":"tag-devils","15":"tag-duke","16":"tag-duke-blue-devils-mens-basketball","17":"tag-enabled","18":"tag-highlights","19":"tag-hornets","20":"tag-mens","21":"tag-nba","22":"tag-story","23":"tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115210495268870399","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}